


Long in Love

by kabeswaters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Pretty darn angsty, Requested, Slow Burn, but don't worry, mature themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 19:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17269838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kabeswaters/pseuds/kabeswaters
Summary: After breaking up with your ex, your best friend, Sirius, tries to comfort you.  But, you cannot let him help, as telling him the truth would expose something even worse: you’ve been in love with him for years.





	Long in Love

**Author's Note:**

> Y/N’s house isn’t specified, but, regardless, in this fic, guys can get into girls’ dorms no problem. Sorry I don’t make the rules (oh, wait...)

The thing about crying for extended periods of time is that time starts to elude itself. It ceases to exist in the way it typically does, instead becoming a prison to possibilities, yet one that speeds by faster than you can process or believe.

So you hadn't known how long you had been sitting in your bedroom, teardrops spilling from your eyes with a fervency that could outdo rainstorms, but it didn't feel like enough. Trapped in the shackles of arguments of the previous hour, nothing you wailed out of your body felt adequate enough to express the guilt which ripped through you. So you allowed your body to fully absorb the impact of every ache of your heart, every burn of your lungs, without question.

“I thought you had moved on.”

His voice rang in your ears. The image of his lips frowning burned on the inside of your eyelids, constructed from dots of light and shadows. It forced to to recollect how they had trembled, suggesting a hold back from anger into sadness. 

What you remember most vividly, however, were his hands. They were flexed and glued to his bedsheets, as if he was afraid that his body would betray him and reach out towards yours, exposing his desperation. But hadn't he done the same thing by making it so obvious he craved your touch? And it's not as if you minded: you forced yourself to swallow that same urge of physical tenderness, considering you had caused him enough pain already. If he wanted to leave, you had no right to hold him back from doing so. 

Even though he was long gone and you were in an entirely different room, on an entirely different bed, your arm reached out as though you were still sitting across from him, fingers grabbing onto the air in the same way they would have wrapped around his wrist if they had gotten the chance. You allowed yourself to remember the feeling of his skin, the warmth it radiated, the thickness of vine-like veins that were layered under that surface.

“So had I.”

Alongside the salt that ran onto your tongue through teardrops, recollecting your words made your mouth taste like cool aluminum: metallic. So much of your delivery was harsher than it should have been; or, maybe, it was the right thing to do. Speak as bluntly as the truth your ex-boyfriend had discovered. Warm him about what storm was hiding underneath your tongue, what monster was lurking underneath your skin.

“So what does that make me?” He shouted then; he barely ever raised his voice out of anger, only due to being overjoyed, so it shook you in the same way earthquakes do buildings. “Am I just some pathetic rebound? Do I mean nothing to you?” Then, much more quietly, like a whisper made out of a breath, as if he was speaking to himself due to being in sheer disbelief: “You said you loved me.”

Even though it wasn’t aggressive or thunderous or venomous, the sentence ripped through you like a blade, leaving your bones to crumble to dust. So your words were stumbled over, your tone defeated, as you replied, “I wasn't lying when I said I loved you.”

It wasn't a lie, you told yourself now. It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't. So why did it feel like one?

Deep in your heart; a partition. An invisible partition, so one you couldn't find when you went searching your emotions for the cause of the dishonesty you felt. It was the same thing that allowed you to fall in love in the first place; in recognizing its futility, you were able to accept his flustered invitation to Hogsmeade. And you thought saying “yes” might saw it away, so did, hoping to find your Elysium after countless nights of sobbing into pillowcases then pretending you were fine. But it hadn't left or softened; you had just been too distracted by study dates and first kisses and late night discussions to realize there was still an issue to be solved. 

The issue of you being in love with Sirius Black.

At first, when you recognized your feelings, you also realized they guided you into every lovesick action: trailing your eyes to find his leather-jacket-clad figure in every crowded room, tripping over words, blushing the pink of dusk at his compliments. All things you didn't mean to do, making your love equally as involuntary. An impulse. A bad habit you needed to end.

Because, of course, he didn't look at you in the same way you saw him, as if he was made of summer breezes and starlight and the magic which poured out of your wands. His smile could sprout flowers and the rest of the world vanished when he came into view, dark hair bouncing and eyes sparkling with mischief. When you were next to him your body was made out of fireworks, going off when he laughed, winked, accidentally dragged his hand against yours.

But when he was next to you? “Y/N,” he said to you one night, “I never knew my heart could beat this slowly. Here.” He grabbed your hand—a motion not odd after four years of self-declared best friendship—and placed it on his chest. While you felt the steady and deep beats of his heart, yours fluttered like wings at the proximity of your fingers to his skin.

“It's only with you, you know.”

He meant it as a compliment; best friends are supposed to feel comfortable around one another. And he didn't know you were feeling the opposite right then; your heart was ceaseless against your chest until it split at Sirius’ ignorant, compassionate words.

So you barricaded those feelings, locked them in a box in your heart and didn't allow yourself to think of them again. The partition was drawn. Sirius asked out Marlene and you did not allow one tear to drop from your eyes. One stroke of grief to rip through your body.

And when they broke up not two weeks later, you did not allow a sly smile to sneak up onto your lips, or a sigh of relief to sound between them. You helped Sirius out of his breakup with carefully chosen words: ones that comforted him without alluding to anything else. 

So when he busted into your bedroom, red-faced and purse-lipped, you wondered if it would be the same for you.

Sirius found you with your arm still reaching out towards the invisible wrist. He walked forwards without an invitation—he usually asked, even though he knew he didn't need one; but this felt different—as if he was a warrior on a battlefield. It was only when he came close enough to your bed that the intensity shifted. It was only once he could determine you were sad his lips dropped into a mirroring frown.

“Are you—” You shook your head, and his voice faded.

He tried again: “What happened?” 

Against your body’s plead to stay still, aching from crying for hours, you sat up. Sirius was standing by the edge of your bed, peering down at you inquisitively; you didn't like being uneven in conversations, so had to gain height somehow. If you were going to fight with your best friend due to not telling him why your boyfriend just broke up with him, you could at least do it with some integrity, you figured.

It wasn't shattered irretrievably, but your voice was translucent and weak as you said, “I got dumped today.” Broken up sounded too real; you could pick up things that were dumped on the ground, find them again, but rarely do broken things get put back together as if nothing ever happened. Without sharp edges still jutting out and every new blow hitting harder than it should.

Sirius’ face fell like it was made of wax that had just melted. He reached out for your hand, but you tore it away.

Before he could ask why—either for the breakup or retraction, it did not matter—you spoke again. “Are you mad at me?”

It was an odd thing to ask after so obviously refusing Sirius’ embrace, and you watched its contradiction dance across Sirius' features, leaving them twisted. Then, at the release, “No.” Sirius sucked in a breath. “Well, I was mad at you. I thought you were ignoring me for some reason, and I was mad, since we usually talk things through. Because we can tell each other everything.”

Sirius' face twisted once more. “Why didn't you tell me about this?” he asked, accusation drawn from the previous sentence.

So much for your attempt at skirting from that very question.

“I… I didn't want to ruin your day,” you lied. At least it was a believable one: Sirius always felt sadness from your sadness, joy from your joy. It wasn't like how you had to force yourself to respond appropriately to his break-up with Marlene, trick yourself into agony.

But you hadn't tricked him: “That's bullshit,” Sirius chuckled, his eyes rolling. “You know I get upset easily for others, so if that’s the truth, then you wouldn’t have been able to tell me anything after the first time you were sad in front of me.”

You didn’t have a sharp response so didn’t speak; your reddened eyes drifted from object to object in your dorm, bed to discarded shoe to stack of textbooks, averting Sirius’ glare. In the resulting silence between you and Sirius, the recollection of the loudness between you and your now ex-boyfriend resurfaced once more.

“Then how could you not stop loving him?”

“I… I don’t know…”

“Am I not enough for you?” You flinched; the high volume and piercing sharpness of his voice shocked you like jumping into freezing water. “You know, I’m not even pissed at you being attracted to him. But the fact you didn’t stop loving him after dating me. Because that makes me feel like I'm just some rebound. Some unsuccessful rebound.”

You were shaking your head incessantly, as if making your world blurry would make your thoughts clearer. “No, no. I swear. I did want you. I loved you and I still do—”

“That's all great,” he interrupted, waving his hands in the air. “But can you tell me that my sole purpose in your life wasn’t to make you stop loving Sirius?”

The thing about lying for extended periods of time is that time starts to elude itself. It ceases to exist in the way it typically does, instead becoming a prison to possibilities, yet one that speeds by faster than you can process or believe.

So when you choked for words, trying to formulate a lie that covered up for the one just discovered, time stopped. Air stilled. The only movement in the world was the smile that crept up on his face, an evil, venomous grin.

And at that moment of living and reliving, you found yourself at the same location in both conversations: a lie exposed in black and white, your mouth unable to speak yourself into safety any longer. All you had left was buffering, making nonsense noises to stall and confessing tangential comments in order to get the other person to stay for as long as they could.

Because, if there was one thing you had learned from your breakup, leaving wasn’t a question of if, but when.

And, if your ex was any indication, you only had a few more moments with Sirius before he would become a tenderly-held memory. As the same pattern of unreciprocated love was repeated; only, this time, it would be your heart left beating like raindrops on rooftops, but severely unfulfilled.

“Y/N.” It was Sirius’ voice, loud and booming as it bounced throughout your room authoritatively, that pulled your eyes back into focus. And once they were drawn in, out of a place of preemptive reminiscence and despite the tension which gripped the air stiffly, you allowed them to drink in Sirius’ face, the places where sharp edges met rounded cheeks, the loose and long bangs that framed them.

The only thing you didn’t want to immortalize was his cold expression. A joke threatened to spill out of your throat; all you desired was to make Sirius smile so you could etch the description of his joy inside of your mind without there being any mistakes in the retelling.

Or maybe it would be easier like this, you thought to yourself, easier to remember him with ice-filled eyes and a frost-coverd face, so being without him would be less missing and more moving on.

“Y/N,” Sirius repeated again. Even though he hadn’t moved—at his voice your depth perception rebounded, eyes able to unfocused on his face and refocus on his body as a whole—he felt closer to you. In a stupid moment of unjustified hope, you thought maybe that feeling was due to Sirius wanting to be closer to you. Wanting to touch you. For a brief moment you indulged yourself in the fantasy, just because you knew it would be one of your last.

Is it odd to feel nostalgic towards pain?

Your body lurched forwards. You assumed your ironic thought would send you chuckling into madness, but, instead, it had clawed at your heart. Because you were nostalgic towards your conversation earlier: so many things you could have said better, kinder, softer.

“Do you even feel guilty, Y/N?”

“Of course I do. Fuck, I’m not a monster.”

“Are you sure?”

You felt the weight of Sirius’ arms before you understood why your body was underneath them. Having been sitting on the side of your thigh, torso propped up by your arms, your body had fallen into his at an odd angle, resulting the right side of your face being pressed in the middle of Sirius’ ribcage.

Even though you felt as though you were slipping down against the fabric of his t-shirt, Sirius promised, “I’ve got you.” So you stayed put; it was almost as if you were testing your faith in his words, waiting to see if you would fall further. 

“Don’t talk to me so angrily,” you demanded. You felt Sirius suck in a breath at your words, probably because they were said too harshly, too late. Yet you said them anyways.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m just worried.” He was defending himself, but still, his words were softer. “Like… can you even get up by yourself?” It took only a moment of Sirius’ arms loosening their grip around you, your body automatically and uncontrollably slipping, for the answer to be realized.

Sirius’ grip tightened once more. “Here, let me help.”

And even his movements were less severe; gently, he slid his arms so his hands could cup each side of your torso, and lifted you back to sitting. Only, this time, he placed you on your bed so both of your hips were squarely beneath you, feet just barely dangling off of the edge.

Out of some unforeseen instinct, you rubbed the sheets near your thighs flat. Only after watching the wrinkles be pushed out did you look up. 

The coldness from Sirius’ face was gone and replaced with the complete opposite expression; his eyes darted, fingers twiddling, and head slightly tilted downwards. At this point, shyness around one another was an uncommon occurrence at most, leaving you confused as he stuttered out, “Can I, uh…Can I maybe sit with you?”

You nodded slowly, body overflowing with equal confusion. You couldn’t recall a time in the last three years, at least, where Sirius asked you permission to sit on your bed. Usually, he just jumped on, as if it were his, even if you were laying on it. Sometimes, he’d land on top of you completely, expression wild, smirking lips just inches away from yours’…

This time he sat a respectable distance away and didn't even position his body to face you.

Even though you didn't complain, Sirius explained: “Moony told me something about how not facing people while talking to them makes telling the truth easier.” He let the comment hang; you knew he was waiting for you to speak, but your lips were a locked wrought-iron gate. 

So, Sirius sucked in a breath, and on the exhale said, “I'm sorry I talked to you that way,”—You could feel him fidgeting—“but I just didn't know where else to put all of the anger that has been welling up inside of me.”

You couldn't help turning towards him. “Why are you upset?”

“Why are you?” he sneered, then faltered. Regret washed down Sirius' face as he apologized quickly.

“No, no, I kind of deserved that,” you assured. Your heart felt like a brick in water and you turned away from Sirius’ face, unprepared to confront his reaction. “I shouldn't have kept what happened to myself for this long. What happened earlier… I got dumped.”

You weren’t sure if your shoulders sagged in relief or because the boulder of Sirius’ knowledge of this information had just been dropped atop them. Sirius’ body reacted in the exact opposite way; you could feel the bed shift as his body bolted further upright. He was looking at you, but you still couldn’t look back.

Shock dripped even from his voice as he asked, “What happened?”

“He said he felt like I didn’t love him enough.” You chose each word carefully, saying them with equal precaution.

“Well that’s shit. I saw the way you looked at him, Y/N. You never looked at anyone else that way. And you’ve never talked to me about someone else so much before.”

I’ve looked at you that way, you thought. And you almost said it, too, even let your mouth open on the impulse. So when you choked the words back, your mouth was left hanging open pathetically.

You snapped it shut. Then you swallowed before responding, “I think he was right.”

“Y/N, look at me,” Sirius said, grabbing your wrist. All the motion did was make you aware that Sirius’ fingers were warm. “Y/N. Y/N.”

“I didn’t tell you because you can’t convince me I didn’t do that. You can talk me through the sadness, but I deserved this. I did a lot of things wrong, Sirius.”

His fingers were still coiled around your wrist. “I can’t imagine you doing anything wrong. When I think about dating you, you’re always the better half.”

That comment got your attention; you whipped your head to look at Sirius. “You’ve thought about dating me?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sirius agreed without reassurance. His eyes dipped from yours momentarily. “I mean, haven’t you ever just let yourself imagine dating different people? Like compatibility tests?”

“Not really. I guess that’s why I was shocked.” 

Sirius nodded knowingly, and, for a moment, the conversation felt finished. Fingers were even released from your wrist, Sirius’ attention turned back towards the wall.

But then, he continued: “I know you, and I know you have a tendency to take the blame for things. So just know, whatever caused you to break up, it probably wasn’t as much of your fault as you think it is.”

“He called me a monster,” you whispered.

Sirius turned, eyes wide, jaw clenched. “He did what?”

“He wasn’t wrong. But still, it made me feel like… like the issue that broke us up is something I’ll never stop doing. Something I’ll never escape from, because it’s me. I am the monster.”

“Fine. I wanted to get over Sirius. But I do love you.”

“Not enough. Not more than him.”

Of course, you thought. I have never loved someone more than him.

Sirius jumped up, off of the bed. His arms were waving in pattern with his speech. “I don’t give a fuck. I know you, and there’s nothing you could ever do to warrant him calling you something as cruel as that.”

“Nothing?” Your lips tasted salty. Your voice was a whimper.

“Nothing.”

“Even being in love with someone else at the same time as dating him?”

Sirius’ arms fell down along with his face, which was watching you intensely as if waiting for you to burst out into laughter and say you were lying behind tears of joy. But the tears that had welled in your eyes were from sadness and sadness alone.

You were expecting yelling and blame, a conversation full of so much anger it and disappointment it would trump the one that was haunting you now, still, hours later. Instead, Sirius walked in front of you and asked, in a tone so gentle you doubted for a moment it was him speaking, “Did I ever tell you that was one of the reasons Marlene broke up with me?”

“No.”

Sirius smiled to himself; the grin was full of distaste and irony. “She noticed I had feelings for someone else and talked to me about it. I told her, as horrible as it was, that they had developed after starting to date her. And I promised that I was working on controlling them, because this person,”—he turned his gaze towards the side, off of yours’—“would never feel the same. She said she was willing to work on it with me. To wait.”

“That’s really nice of her,” you said quietly. Recounting all your moments with Marlene—making small talk with her, talking about her with Sirius—you had never remembered complimenting her so genuinely.

“I know,” Sirius breathed. He was ruffling the back of his long hair with one hand. “Especially because, at the end of the day, I couldn’t stop my feelings. She took that surprisingly well. Maybe she was expecting it. But then she started saying maybe it was for the better, leading to her listing off all of the problems she had with me that she wouldn’t have to deal with anymore. And all of that I told you.”

You nodded, lips pursed. “Why didn’t you tell me the rest of it, though?” Something inside of you answered the question before Sirius could; it was that possibility, only made possible by your own parallel experience, that could make you think such an answer was even fathomable. Made your heart start to pound in your chest out of anticipation.

“You want to know?”

You couldn’t help yourself. Instead of affirming, you began, “Was it—”

“You? Yes.” A moment passed, then, “It still is.”

Your cheeks burned crimson and your heart was a car alarm inside of your chest, just ringing, ringing, ringing. Pushing off of your still-flatly-pressed hands, you landed in front of Sirius. There wasn’t much space between the edge of your bed and his body; usually, such close proximity would worry you, make you think you would expose your feelings with embarrassing certainty. But now it barley mattered.

One last question echoed in your ear:

“Are you even going to tell him how you feel?” Your lack of answer was answer enough. “I can’t believe you aren’t going to tell him, but are willing to break us up over it.”

Watch me, you thought.

You observed your hands press against Sirius’ chest as if watching from the other side of a dream. But this was so real; the thinness of the fabric, the motion of his breath, the tremble of your fingertips. 

“It was you, too,” you said, gaze still on his chest (you wondered, for a moment, how he had enough courage to look you in the eyes while admitting his feelings). “I love you, Sirius.”

When you finally looked up, you found that his eyes were already staring down at you. For a moment, all the world was were your two pairs of eyes, the drumming of your heart, and his breath against your fingertips. Then, he tipped his head and leaned down, pressing your mouths together, rushing his hands onto your back.

His lips tasted like coffee and kissing him sent a similar sensation of warm awakening through your body. He kissed you like he was letting a wave knock him over; he allowed all of himself to surge into the motion. Your fingers tugged at the front of his shirt, for balance, for proximity, for intimacy.

When the kiss broke, your foreheads pressed together, your panting breaths intermixed in the small space of air left between lips. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” you admitted. Sirius smiled like he had just learned how to.

You let your forehead slip, to drop down and then rest on his chest. Heavy breathing filled the room, then flattened out.

The lovely silence was broken by Sirius’ voice. It was rougher around the edges, not cold, but calloused, all from one kiss. “You’re not a monster. I don’t care what he says and you shouldn’t, either. You can’t control your feelings.”

“I could have told him sooner,” you said, unsure of why you were still taking his side if you got to be next to Sirius’ now, for as long as he would let you.

“Maybe.” Sirius paused for a moment. “But then it wouldn’t have been genuine. I think it would have seemed more like you expected him to do more and make you fall out of love. Like blaming him for not being enough and expecting him to figure out how to be.”

“I guess.”

Sirius’ hands moved from your back, sliding up your shirt all the way to your face, cupping the sides of it. “Listen. You thought it would work. It didn’t. You never gave up on him because you knew he was a good guy—which, honestly, I’m starting to think might not be true—but not because you wanted him to struggle. You wanted to love him because you thought he deserved it, not because you wanted to trick him and break his heart.”

Something inside of you broke and you leaned into Sirius further. His thumbs were stroking your cheeks before the tears even started, but became ever the more useful for wiping the drops off of your face.

Even still, you sunk down further, letting your head drop back down on his chest, not caring that your tears would soak your face. You slipped your hands out from between your bodies and wrapped your arms around his back, pressing your bodies into a hug.

“Thank you,” you whispered, tone full of tears but heart full of hope. 

“You’re not a monster. You’ve never been one.”

“I’m not a monster,” you repeated to yourself, jaw barely moving against Sirius’ tear-stained shirt. “I’m not a monster.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was requested on Tumblr by @meteorslunatic. Find me there under the same name @madforscamander.


End file.
